Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE The spotlight that Martha Nussbaum turns on the plight of women in developing nations brings the disproportion between human capabilities and the opportunities to exercise them sharply into focus. Social prejudices, economic discrimination, and deep-seated traditions and attitudes all harbor the seeds of systemic injustices within governing policies and institutions. The refusal on the part of a dominant class to recognize the rights and claims (...) of subaltern individuals and groups has both symbolic and material consequences. The power that one group exercises over another brings the refusal to recognize the rights and claims of others to the fore. Thanks to the moral priority that Paul Ricoeur accords to the victim against such refusals, I tie the fragility of identity to the idea of justice’s federating force. This federating force, I therefore argue, accompanies the struggle for recognition among capable human beings. (shrink)

This volume brings together eleven essays that address a range of issues extending from broader questions of social justice to the sexual intimacy that bears the mark of our fleshly existence. Collectively, these essays extend the reach of Paul Ricoeur’s early to late works by taking up some of the major social, political and religious challenges facing us in a postmodern, ultrapluralistic world.

So much for the Aesthetic. We can now proceed to the Analytic, the philosophical importance of which is much greater. Kant's main contentions in this part of his work can be summed up in; two propositions: human understanding contains certain a priori concepts, and on these are based certain non-empirical principles; these concepts are only general concepts of a phenomenal object, and therefore the principles in question are only prescriptive to sense-experience. As has already been said, interest in the first (...) proposition has distracted attention from the fact that the important thing Kant has to say is contained in the second. (shrink)

Heidegger's thought has recently been made more available to English readers by the publication of two books: one a translation of one of Heidegger's works, the other, by Thomas Langan, an American scholar, described as a critical study of Heidegger. Heidegger's philosophy has had little or no influence in England; and this seems a good opportunity for considering whether this neglect is merited, or whether some defence can be offered of Heidegger's curious manipulations of the German and Greek tongues. Since (...) An Introduction to Metaphysics philosophises on a basis of Greek, though it purports to be philosophy, not history of philosophy, most of this article will be concerned with Heidegger's use and abuse of that language. I shall suggest, however, that the same conclusions hold good of Heidegger's use of German. (shrink)

I believe the time is come for a re-estimation of the status of minds in the universe. I use the word mind quite naïvely at first, in the belief that it has a nucleus of meaning that is sufficiently clear. I do not wish its meaning to be restricted to the phenomena of clear consciousness, still less of self-consciousness.